


Listen to Your Heart (Not a Measuring Stick)

by everyperfectsummer



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: DCCW Rare Pair Swap, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, mcsnurtle shoutout because I had to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 15:39:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15122552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer
Summary: Prompt: Barry/Cisco and Cisco/Lisa, poly negotiations? Or just happy poly relationships; no smut.





	Listen to Your Heart (Not a Measuring Stick)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darringtons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darringtons/gifts).



> This was written for leviarty for the dccw rarepair swap; @leviarty, I hope that you enjoy this! This is not as fluffy as I intended, but hopefully still fluffy enough for it to be up your alley :) @everyone: this is is was typed with a combo of voice to text and my few functional fingers, so while I did edit this, I'm sure some typos slipped through. Please feel free to leave constructive criticism on grammar/spelling/content warnings I've overlooked, and please leave a comment in general because that brings me joy :)

There's an old story about sailors, who have a wife at every port but only truly love the sea. People -- friends, family, strangers -- try to make that Cisco's story, make the tale something they can understand. A man can only love once, they say. Or maybe it's that he can only truly love one thing, holding it closest to his heart with his other loves ranked underneath. But that has never been how's Cisco story goes. Maybe it's wasn't the sailors', either. Maybe the sailors' wives were not tricked and taken in, but walked in knowing that love does not have to be ranked any more than it has to be finite. Maybe they loved each other, and asked the sailors to carry love letters from wife to wife, and maybe they had as many husbands as their husbands had wives, and maybe they too loved the sea, and maybe they weren't just in love, but were also happy. Maybe not. Cisco can't speak for those in other relationships, or even the others in his, just himself, but. He can say that he is in love. He can say that he is happy.

Cisco tries to explain it to people: his powers, his wanderings, his exploration of the multiverse and the relationship that has to his relationships to Barry and Lisa. None of them understand, even the two in question, and he stumbles over the sentences he says in his head, explaining to the imaginary listener until he can finally say it out loud.

His loves are not his home, not his port in a storm, not his anchor in the multiverse that keeps him from losing track of which universe is his. You can't make people your anchor because people change. The Lisa he kissed on the roof last night is not the same as the Lisa who dreamed of professional ice skating is no the same as the Lisa who honey-potted him in a bar is not the same as the Lisa he'll return to after the next time he leaves.

"Okaaaaay," Barry had said, hearing this, "so then why are you dating us two, from this earth, instead of all of the Barrys and Lisas on every Earth, everywhere?" He wasn't jealous, no matter how the question sounded, just sincerely curious. Ever the scientist, ever trying to understand, and Cisco doesn't know how to explain to him what he himself doesn't truly understand. That this Barry is always a different person but always Barry in a way no other Earth's Barrys are. That the same is true for Lisa, and Caitlin, and his family. That that was the worst part of losing Dante to Flashpoint, knowing that multiverse was full of Dante Ramons who /lived/ and that none of them were or would ever be his brother.

Barry's moment of selfishness was voluntarily reliving, in the truest sense of the word, his own worst memory to try and save someone else. Because Barry wanted to save people, looked at the world and thought about what he could bring to it, what he could do, how he could help. Lisa looked at the world and saw strategies, saw things she wanted and the opportunities she could use to get there. Cisco didn't look at the world but through it, seeing it as what it was, and what it could be, and what it wasn't, here, but was, somewhere else. And all three of them envied the others and judged the others and were proud and insecure and more all in different proportions, because they were all three of them different people regardless of whom they chose to date.

Back when Cisco was still living in Central, his relationships still starting out, everyone tried to compare the two, quantify them, turn his love for each of them into measurable units. Everyone. Even Barry. Even Lisa. (Even him.) It took the three of them weeks of talking it over to realize that the problem wasn't that they were failing to make the two relationships equal, but that they were viewing equality as the goal.

It had been Lisa who'd finally cracked it, finally wrapped her lips around the idea they'd been tasting on the tips of their tongues and set it free. "I'm dating you, and you're dating Barry, and that means that Barry's involved in our relationship but I don't want our relationship to revolve around /his/ relationship with you." Cisco felt something in his chest tighten in an emotion he couldn't name as he watched Lisa's serious face, noting Barry's look of dawning realization in the background. "It doesn't matter which of us you love more, or which of us loves _you_ more, we're dating you because we get something we want out of it, and expecting me to want the same things as Mr. Hero over here is dumb. We want to be happy with you, and we both do happy differently." She glanced at Barry, her mouth twisting ruefully as she heard what she just said. "Or at least, I want to be happy with you rather than equal with him. Can't really speak for him, though, especially basing this whole thing on us wanting different things."

"So we've been treating equality between my relationships with each of you as a goal in and of itself, rather than as a proxy for the actual goal of relationship satisfaction?" Cisco said, cursing the nervousness that had his tone come out like a question despite his certainty regarding the words.

Barry shrugged, excited eyes on the middle distance, already sketching out formulas for successful relationships in his head. "It probably works for some relationships as a proxy for relationship satisfaction, not because the two are inherently related, but because they can be. If you view being loved identically as a necessary component of being loved, then," he shrugged, "establishing relationship rules that are basically split custody agreements for affection makes sense. If not..."

He shrugged again. "Less important. And I guess I'm with Lisa in that I'm not with Lisa. If that makes sense. That I want our dates to be watching TV and fighting crime and and setting up elaborate habitats for McSnurtle, and I'm pretty sure that you guys like different stuff, and like. I'd be upset, if you ignored all of my texts and stuff and only did things with Lisa, but if you split your time and your heart 60/40 instead of 50/50 that'd probably be ok with me, and 90/10 would probably not be, and I mostly can't predict the future but I can promise to tell you in the future if I'm unhappy so that we can work it out then, and let's be real, we have a lot of reasons for relationship trouble besides your relationship with someone else. Which didn't come out like I meant, but you know what I mean. We have issues I can't handle, over you and Lisa, or you and me, or _anything_ , I'll let you know and we'll work it out."

"You're sure you won't just sit on your misery and sulk and martyr yourself?" Cisco asked, skeptical after years of seeing Barry endure needless suffering because he felt that it was the Right Thing to Do.

Barry met his eyes, face serious but not upset. "I'll promise to tell you if anything about us is hurting me, on the condition that you tell me if anything about us is hurting you." He nodded towards Lisa. "And on the condition that you do the same." He visibly reconsidered. "The same as in telling him, not telling me."

Lisa nodded back. "I can't promise to do it, but I can promise to try." A laughing glint entered her eye. "And I feel that trying would be much easier if you explained what you meant when you said that you 'mostly' can't predict the future. You know. Because having information about your opponent's precognitive abilities is like diamonds." She smiled, a half smile bordering on a smirk that had been practiced so often that is was now more natural than her "real" smile. "Information is a girl's best friend."

"Because it's useful for making Rogue plans?" Cisco asked, trying to get back into his usual playful banter with Lisa.

"How _dare_ you even suggest," Lisa said, putting a hand to her chest in mock offense, "that I would waste good information on my enemies on something that will be 'made, executed, and thrown away'," she finished, in a terrible imitation of her brother. "Imagine the waste." She sniffed, Barry laughed, and Cisco felt something in his chest click into place. Neither of his loves were his anchor or his port or his home; his powers and his heart had set him to explore. But they were the people he wanted to tell about his adventures, the people  _he_ wanted to anchor, the people he wanted to explore alongside, and, most of all, people that he wanted to explore. He vibes universes, after all, and each person has a universe of their own in their heart. And in this moment, after weeks and weeks of flirting and dating and serious talks, Cisco feels that he has finally been given their hearts to explore. No matter how many other Earths he goes to, he intends to explore the two that he's just been handed all his days.


End file.
